The Review:Madonna releases her best album in years. Curiously (or cleverly - cynical, moi?) the fantastic title track only features on the deluxe edition, so it’s worth forking out the extra.

It’s a brilliant mix of high energy dance pop (Living For Love) and the slower and more guitar-heavy music (Joan of Arc), the latter suiting Madonna’s voice well, in addition to being more personal.

It’s all infectiously catchy and hasn’t left my stereo since its release. There are a couple of skippable tracks, notably S.E.X., but generally this is a highly polished album that shows She still has it!

The Verdict: Knocks 'Hard Candy' and 'MDNA' into their respective cocked hats.

The Review:Asa Butterfield comes of age as an autistic boy, competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad while grieving for his father and discovering feelings for a fellow contestant. The ever-watchable Sally Hawkins is excellent too, struggling to break into her son's mind, and the relationship between the two is beautifully played, as is the involvement of the teacher (Rafe Spall).

When dealing with this subject matter, there's so much potential for sickly sentimentality and it’s refreshingly avoided here with an ending which is satisfying but not explicitly happily-ever-after. It's a lovely watch; tender, funny, as achingly sad as it is uplifting.

The Review: Here's an intriguing and daring concept. A short story built entirely from dialogue. And it works! I don't think I once lost track of who was speaking.

The story paints the picture of a less-than-happy marriage. One afternoon, Grace challenges Adam; it’s an accusation that could tear their marriage apart.

The author cleverly keeps the truth under wraps until the very last line and it's my kind of satisfying. Thomas could’ve made this story's concept even more effective by excluding ALL non-dialogue words. It'd have been a challenge towards the end but it would have made the piece truly unique.

The Review:It's been a while since I read the book, but this film adaptation seems faithful. It looks great and the acting from Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson is highly watchable. I still think the premise of the narrator being Death works well.

Now for the bad news. The film lacks subtlety and ticks many of the cliché boxes for a drama set in Nazi Germany. The accents range from bearable to frankly irritating and there's one death which is so clichéd it's laughable when it should be very sad indeed.

The Review: This independent 2012 movie is a good little film with a striking central performance from Jack Reynor who plays the eponymous character. Richard’s a typical lad engaging in banter with his mates and smitten by a girl. One night, alcohol and jealousy mix to catastrophic effect. What follows is a slow-burning and haunting portrayal of grief that tests friendships and loyalties.

This film will be too slow for some but I found it compelling and was desperate to see how it would all play out. It ends abruptly and not entirely satisfactorily, but this can be true of life itself.

The Review:Kevin and Rick: two boys who have to keep up fronts both at school and home. Not only do they have to battle with growing feelings for each other, they also have to suffer violence at their fathers’ hands. Their coping mechanisms involve violence but at the heart of the book is a love story fighting to get out.

There's some great writing here but ideas, such as Kevin's need to control Rick, are repeated frequently, and the book would benefit from tighter editing. The conclusion feels contrived and it reduced the impact created by the rest of the book.

The Verdict: A largely gripping read but one that doesn't entirely satisfy.

The Review: An Edinburgh Fringe hit, this show comprises nothing more than a bare stage, four stools and four actors. Andrew Doyle, Andrew Hayden-Smith, Julie Hesmondhalgh and Camille Ucan take turns to read out snippets of true coming-out stories collected from the public. It's frequently funny, climaxing with a ridiculously over-the-top piece performed by Doyle who’s mad that his mother accepts his sexuality without any fuss. And it's often moving, Hesmondhalgh standing out as the conveyor of true emotion. Such a shame that an interval meant that the momentum generated by the stories piling up was lost, making the evening feel overlong.

The Verdict: A good evening that could have been great had it run straight* through.

The Review: ‘It’ is someone you may or may not recognise, following you at a steady walking pace until it reaches and kills you. This curse/haunting is passed on via sex. To stop being followed, you must make love to someone else. It’s a premise that works strikingly well, a metaphor for the pressures of teen sex and losing your virginity.

Innocent day-to-day scenes become disturbing 360-degree panning shots as you and the characters have to evaluate who is ‘infected’.

I’ve rarely experienced such well-timed shocks in a film. Punctuated by a nightmarish soundtrack, this is a compelling, utterly terrifying movie.

The Review: This series chronicling the lives of gay men in modern day Manchester has never wholly engaged or moved me. It simply isn't grounded enough in my gay reality. But Episode 6 is something else.

Smiley, sexually unfulfilled Lance is finally given backstory in a remarkable opening sequence. His relationship with Henry on the rocks, he’s currently experimenting with the dangerous Daniel, who’s embracing his sexuality and despising it in the same breath.

Events progress (via a moving, eerie encounter with a familiar face) inexorably towards their dreadful conclusion, all the more powerful after being signposted during the programme's first minute.

The Verdict: A shocking episode that elevates an entertaining (but occasionally disappointing) series to stunning heights.

The Review: Yen is the 2013 winner of the Royal Exchange’s annual playwriting competition. Set in the intimate Studio, the play is simply mesmerising. It’s the story of two brothers who watch porn and play video games all day, abandoned by their alcoholic mother. Their existence is bleak, hopeless… until Jen, a concerned neighbour, enters, breathing life and light into their lives.

The script is exceptional, crackling with coarse language, filthy jokes and typical lad banter. The boys’ behaviour is, by turns, funny, heartbreaking and violent. Strong support from the neighbour and mother means that all four shine in this stunning play.

The Verdict: Tragedy comes from hope, hope from tragedy in this worthy winner.